Ok, so I've actually heard a lot of misconceptions about homeschool and being homeschooled, and one of them is, "But you don't get to go on field trips if you're home schooled."
... Wrong. I would say as a general rule that home schooled kids actually get to go on two or three times as many field trips as public or private school kids.
We belong to a Facebook group of home school families in our area and they work to organize 1-2 field trips a month. We actually missed the first couple (pumpkin patch and fire station) but we made the third one, a trip to the air base! The kids ranged from ages 4-18 on this field trip and they had a blast! They got to try on real pilot helmets, got to look through a pair of $10,000 night vision goggles, they drove us out on the runway while the F-15's were warming up and getting ready to take off, and then we got to stand very close as they took off (see photo above to see how close we were... we felt the ground shake), and the pilots actually waved to the group of kids! They also got to sit in an F-15 that was being worked on in the hanger and got a tour of the operations center and the rest of the base. No, not a bad field trip at all, and the adults had fun too, or at least I did.
I'll try to update every time we get to go on a group field trip, but I should mention that we go on 'family' field trips all the time to learn about different things. In September we went to the redwood forest and the California coast and learned about redwood trees, star fish, anemones, rocks and too many other things to list (taking long trips during the regular school year is also a bonus of home school). We also frequently go to the park to learn about nature, go to one of the many wildlife refuges to learn about birds such as Bald Eagles, and have a number of museums and national parks close by that we can take trips to.
So, do home schooled kids get to go on field trips? Oh yeah.
Questions? Comments? Where do your home schoolers take field trips too and how often? Let us know in a comment below!
We spent the last school year in CA staying with relatives and took advantage of a ton of neat places for some homeschool field trips. The Ronald Reagan presidential library, the Getty museum and the Gene Autry museum were some of the highlights of our year. This year has been lacking in the field trip department but I'm hoping to get in at least one or two.
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